Chapter Seven
She had to stop thinking about them, Adrienne told herself for the hundredth time. Granted, it had only been a few hours since they turned her world upside down.
She hadn’t slept, hadn’t eaten, and hadn’t stopped thinking about them at all. Which also implied that now was as good a time as ever to pack up and leave the city. As in, right this minute.
Her father owned a tiny little cabin deep in the Adirondack Mountains. No one knew he owned it. It was his private place to go and think. He had gifted it to Adrienne to do the same when she needed to solve a problem or just unwind.
Before she lost her nerve, she called the office and told her PA, Sarah Bates, to inform everyone that the company was closing for two weeks. Her motto was simple. When she was on vacation, her staff was on vacation. It’s the only way she could truly relax.
She was giving herself two weeks to get a feel for it before she made the final leap to selling her companies and going off-grid. For good.
She packed a few bags, got some supplies, gathered up all the fresh vegetables from her fridge then loaded her car, and was just about to set off when her phone rang.
Her stomach knotted immediately at the sight of the caller ID. Peter Walkman. He was the DA who had been instrumental in putting Desmond Morton away. She wondered if he knew what Desmond had done to get his sentence so significantly reduced that he only served three years.
She rubbed her arms to get some warmth into her system. Desmond always had the ability to make her feel ice-cold and repulsed.
“Adrienne, I had no idea,”
Peter said immediately.
“This comes right from the top. We’re thinking blackmail is involved, or else how did he just get to walk out of prison in broad daylight? Are you okay?" Peter asked, his voice rife with concern.
After Desmond’s case, for which he was sentenced for racketeering, extortion, kidnapping, and worst of it all, human trafficking, Peter Walkman had put on his best suit, meaning one that actually fitted him properly, and asked her out. She accepted the invitation to dinner as a new acquaintance and made that abundantly clear to him.
God, she had been so stupid back then. She didn’t know anything about Desmond’s criminal activities—she’d been too sheltered to know that men like him existed. She’d puked her guts out throughout his trial as she listened to the things he’d been involved in. He was the scum of the earth. He violently raped women and sold their children.
She’d been twenty-four when he approached her, hadn't stopped crying since the death of her father a week before.
She shuddered to think what would have happened to her if he hadn’t been sent to prison. If she had to be his wife, in person.
“I’m perfectly fine, Peter.”
“Adrienne, listen to me. You need protection. I’m not taking any chances. The man is obsessed with you. You’re the only reason he’s out. He’s been talking about coming to claim you again. Your divorce is probably what prompted him to get out in the first place.”
Adrienne pinched the bridge of her nose, a tsunami of a headache threatening to burst from her eye sockets.
Desmond was supposed to leave her alone, dammit. They were divorced. But she had been subconsciously expecting him to show up. He thought he had her right where he wanted her. He was wrong. But she couldn’t deny that the main reason she was packed and ready to leave and go hide out in her father’s cabin was because of him, no matter how brave and unbothered she pretended to be about his release.
She had given herself twenty years of freedom—the length of his prison sentence—before she thought she would have to deal with him on the off chance he still wanted to come after her.
But now he was out, and she had run out of time.
Desmond Morton was a disgusting criminal disguised as a successful businessman; and not the kind that Miriam read about in her secret obsession with romance books.
He was weak, pathetic, slimy, repulsive, and a coward because his victims were women and children. For everything else, he sent his goons to do his dirty work.
Reclaiming her?
He never had her in the first place. Her skin crawled at the thought of breathing the same air as him, of him touching her. He was the worst kind of human being to ever exist.
But he’d dangled something in her face that had been more important to her than anything else in the world. And then showed her a marriage license. All she had to do was marry him, and he would give her what she wanted. He’d told her he could make her fall in love with him. She would rather eat hot coals.
He was obsessed with her.
She couldn’t stand a strand of hair on his head, long before she knew what a despicable man he was.
It still pained her immensely that she had fallen for his proposition. But at that point, she thought he’d been harmless, infatuated with her, and he promised her that one thing—that one priceless thing—that had once belonged to her father and should have been hers but was now his through a cruel twist of fate.
Her father had just died, dammit. She’d been desperate, vulnerable, and stupid, and like the snake he was, he swooped in and promised her he would give back what he took from her father if she met his conditions.
She had to marry him, and on the night of their honeymoon, he would give her the item back. All she wanted was to feel that precious possession in her hands again.
During their engagement, she was forced to attend an array of social events with him. There were images of her still lurking around on the internet where they were pictured together, with his hand on her lower back and the smile on her face undeniably fake.
She gave him millions of dollars to get out of debt. And she used that as a bargaining tool—that he could only kiss and touch her on the night they got married. It bought her some time. All she wanted was what he’d had of her father’s.
They’d gotten married. The night of their honeymoon, which she paid for, rolled up, and he got arrested right there in the hotel room, straight from their reception. She had still been wearing a white silk dress that she hated and chose, especially for the occasion.
For the next three years, he played with her. Holding that possession over her head and knowing she would do anything to have it back. And then, one day, she decided he wasn’t going to do that to her anymore.
She wasn’t going to give him that power over her anymore. She divorced him because it was clear he was never going to give her back what belonged to her.
“Adrienne, where are you? I’m sending over a few bodyguards. They’re some of the best.”
“I don’t need any protection from anyone. I’m fine. I’m going where no one will ever find me. Trust me.”
"Adrienne, you need some sort of protection. You can’t be alone. Stop being so stubborn.”
“Peter, thank you for looking out for me. But I’m fine. I’m not afraid of him, and I won’t hesitate to shoot his balls off if he comes within a breath of me.”
Peter groaned on the other side of the line, but he knew better. Maybe she was being silly. But she wasn’t going to let him think she was scared of him.
“You don’t even own a gun.”
“I’ll get one.”
“You don’t understand. There’s talk he’s going to kidnap you. He has it all arranged. I have this from a reliable source. His inmate is also my informant. Please, listen to me. When you divorced him, you turned the tables. He’s out to get you back and if he can’t, he’s going to kill you.
“Whoever his allies are now, they go over everyone’s head. Do you understand what I’m saying? Whoever he’s working for now, has given him an army. He’s untouchable. Not even the law can get to him now. He can do anything he likes to you.”
She sighed.
“Look, my informant said he plans on keeping you in some dungeon in Brazil. He said how you deprived him of... of fucking you and he was going to get his fill before he puts you in a cage. Are you listening to me? You need protection because Desmond Morton is coming for you. You need protection.”
“I won’t be home, Peter. I’m leaving for an undisclosed location. No one is going to find me.”
“Jesus, Adrienne. Tell me where you’re going so I can send them to you. You won’t even know they’re there. They’re highly professional, ex-SEALs and will respect your space. I trust them with my life. Please. I need to know you’ll be safe.”
“When am I going to be truly rid of this man, Peter?”
“Once he’s back in prison. I’m sorry, Adrienne. I just need you safe until I can weed out the corrupt officials and start a stink show that would get him off the streets again. You have my word, Adrienne. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get Morton off the streets again. But I need you protected.”
She didn’t believe him, and if he were truthful about it himself, Peter didn’t believe her ex-husband was going back to prison either.
“I only have one other bedroom in the cabin, Peter. Can’t this wait until I get back home?”
“No. And it’ll be fine. They’ll be alternating sleep schedules anyway so don’t worry about their sleeping arrangements.”
“Fine.”
She told him where she was going and hated giving over her control like that.
“I’ll have them come out asap.”
“Unnecessary, but if it makes you feel better.”
“It does.”
She hung up on Peter then called Miriam next, who was only appeased when Adrienne told her Peter was sending her a couple of bodyguards.
Trying not to feel despondent, she piped up some confidence, climbed into her car, and drove off. She’d been so deep in thought about everything and nothing at the same time that she hadn’t realized she had reached the cabin already. Six hours later.
She’d made it just in time before the weather was bound to change for the worse. Shivering in the ice-cold cabin, she quickly got a fire together, and soon, the place became a little cozier.
After doing some tidying up, scrubbing down the kitchen, adding clean sheets to the bed, and adding fresh throws to the sofas, she made some tea and watched the snow fall from her kitchen window. And then the niggling thought she’d had all day materialized in her mind.
How had she forgotten to pay Cassie the ten million dollars she had bid for a date with three guys?
With all her staff sent away on paid vacations with extra bonuses while she was also going to be away, she couldn’t just call her PA and tell her to handle it.
She called Cassie directly and had to sit through a series of in-depth pleasantries before Adrienne got to the point of her call.
“Cassie, who should I make the check out to?”
“What check?”
“For the animal welfare charity auction, you— “
“Oh, that’s been paid already, love. I know you like to remain anonymous, so I told them they didn’t have to make a fuss about anything. Although ten million dollars? Are you kidding me? I almost fell over in shock. I hope they were—”
Adrienne couldn’t help but interrupt Cassie.
“You said it was paid already?”
Wait. Was she losing her mind? Had she told her PA to take care of it before she sent them off after all?
No. She didn’t. So how—
“Yes. The money was transferred to their bank account the night of the auction because Williams, the president of Animal Welfare, called me at 6 a.m. to ask me who the generous donor was. Okay, I’m saying that calmly, but trust me, you nearly gave Williams a heart attack as well. He thought it was some mistake or something. I told him it wasn’t.”
“Did he say where it came from? The funds?”
“Umm, are you okay?”
Of course, Cassie would ask her that question. She was behaving oddly because surely, she should know all the details of the transfer in the first place.
“I’m fine. I just can’t remember which account I used.”
“It happens to the best of us. Um, Williams did ask who Obsidian Inc. was since he couldn’t find any details about the company.”
Obsidian Inc?
She had never heard of the company, let alone owned it.
“That wasn’t me.”
“It was you, Adrienne. The reference was clearly Cassie Brundt’s Animal Welfare charity auction. Since you were the only person in history to donate that much in one go to the charity, it wasn’t a mistake.”
“Right,”
Adrienne said distractedly. She had to get to the bottom of this at once.
After ending the conversation with Cassie and searching online for a company called Obsidian Inc. and coming up with nothing, she dreaded having to call her PA for work stuff, but she had to know.
Adrienne had just picked up her phone again when everything around her changed.
The air thickened. Her body at once started to vibrate. Memories coursed through her, and her core started to pulse.
She felt their presence before she saw them.
Coming out of the tiny kitchen, tucked away from the living room, her gaze devoured the sights of Emerson Foley, Darien Price, and Austin Brown.
Confused by the conflicting reactions in her body, all she could manage was to stand there in mute astonishment.
She planned never to see them again. Did her universe not get her email?
So what were they doing in her private space, dominating her very existence with their presence and making her feel as if she were spiraling out of control so badly that she was on the verge of begging them to hold her down?
She forced herself to get a grip. They weren’t supposed to be there.
“Ms. Palmer,”
Austin said, and everything inside her exploded as she realized what was happening.
These were the bodyguards Peter had insisted he send over to keep her safe.
He had hired the same three men she had bid on at an auction, won, and then had sex with. Not just one of them. Or two. But all three of them. And not just normal everyday sex but the virginity-taking, mind-blowing orgasmic kind of sex.
No. Absolutely not. No.
“You have to leave,”
she said, folding her arms across her chest.
“Peter made a mistake. If I had known he was going to send you three, I would never have allowed it. So please leave. Now.”
They had to leave. Immediately. Before she started to falter, to spiral in the wake of the impressions their hands, mouths, and cocks had left on her body.
And then it hit her.
Oh god.
Obsidian Inc.